Household account question

[jwlondon]

Hi,

I have a quick question about household accounts as I’ve seen conflicting answers to this question.

Say for example, I have 200,000 avios in the household account and we each have 100,000 avios each.

Now, I book one reward flight for just myself and that costs 9,000 avios, does that 9,000 just come out of my balance or will we have half each deducted from both of our balances?

Internet research has said that it would be half each but when I spoke to BA customer support they said that it’ll only come out of my balance as I have enough to cover it. But as that contradicts everything else I’ve read, I’m now confused!

Any clarification anyone has would be great, thanks!

[Rob]

Never believe the BA call centre. Go out pro-rata.

[jwlondon]

That’s what I thought, thank you!

[tiriavpo]

Strangely, since the recent avios changes, it appears as the full amount from your account, followed by a pro-rata balancing payment to you from the other account. So an outgoing of 9,000 going initially, and then a (pro rata) balancing payment of 4,500 to you from the other account – something like:

Reward Flight
Flight Details
-9,000 Avios

Household Redemption
Contribution Received
4,500 Avios

But the net result is that your balances reduce pro-rata.

Not sure how this accounting method would appear if you were to book something for a greater amount than you had in your individual account – eg a booking for 150,000?

[John]

It’s irrelevant how much is in your own account. It would just show -150000 and then whatever the relevant contributions are.

From an IT perspective the contributions probably happen first and then the redemption, and I would guess it always had to happen like this, but your account just shows more information since some update early this year or late last year. The displayed order in transaction history appears to be the same as the way members are listed in the household.

So if you are the head of household it would show the redemption first followed by the contributions, even if you personally started with 0 avios.